Some pictures must be taken, some things must be blogged. Photography and pop culture.
I’m pleased about today’s post for two reasons: 1. photos taken with camera, not smartphone (that’s the second post in a row with camera pictures–it’s getting better) and 2. skies!
Sunrise above, sunset below.
It was November— the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind—songs in the pines.
L.M. Montgomery – Anne of the Island
Note: This post was originally published on Some Photoblog in April 2019. However, I deleted it after I realised I hated the posted photographs. I took some new ones and now I hereby, with some minor changes, republish the post, in time for Agatha Christie’s birthday.
No spoilers for any books or short stories ahead.
This is the post that was always meant to be. I have never specially planned it, but I was always conscious of its existence outside Some Photoblog’s space-time continuum. And here it is now.
World, welcome to my most favourite author ever.
Some call her the Queen of Crime and even if you’ve never read any of her books, you know who she is.
Of course, I’ve mentioned Agatha Christie multiple times on this blog. I will probably keep mentioning her.
I got into Agatha Christie sometime in my mid-teens; my first book was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, an Hercule Poirot mystery, which also happens to be one of the best. It could hardly have been a better start. But her best selling, and indeed the best selling mystery novel of all, is And Then There Were None. Not a surprise at all, I’m sure everyone has at least heard of it!
(Yes, it’s the-one-that-one-that-used-to-have-that-racist-title, but this was taken from a children’s rhyme, which is not Agatha’s creation. In newer editions, the racial slur in the rhyme is replaced with “soldier”.)
Hercule Poirot, a private detective from Belgium, and Miss Marple, an old lady who has lived all of her life in a little village of St Mary Mead, are Agatha Christie’s most famous characters. But she’s much more than that. There are Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, the couple that first appear in The Secret Adversary as young adventurers and who, unlike Poirot and Marple, age with each subsequent book. Then we have short stories featuring Mr Parker Pyne, who is an unusual type of detective, if he can be called that. Are you happy? If not, consult Mr Parker Pyne, runs his advertisement in the newspaper. His speciality appears to be the matters of the heart (as in, love, not the organ). And then there is the most mysterious character Agatha ever created, Mr Harley Quin. Not to be confused with Harley Quinn, the DC comics character. He appears and disappears again just at the right time, with no explanation, and we never get to find out anything about him. The short stories featuring him are written from the point of view of Mr Satterthwaite, a middle aged socialite, who–not in a malicious way–enjoys other people’s drama–and who also makes an appearance in Poirot novel Three Act Tragedy. Harley Quin short stories have this spooky atmosphere, almost touching on supernatural.
Similarly, stories in The Hound of Death collection have the same feel. There have also been new short story collections released in recent years, which include such short stories.
Apart from all this, Agatha Christie’s work includes mystery novels without any regular detective; a few with Superintendent Battle, who also appeared alongside Poirot in Cards on the Table. And so on and so on.
I don’t know how many people are aware of the fact that she didn’t just write mystery/crime fiction. She wrote six novels under the pen name Mary Westmacott. I’ve seen them boxed under “romantic novel”, though I’m unsure this is entirely correct. At least, I don’t think they’re strictly romances. So far I’ve read Giant’s Bread and Unfinished Portrait and enjoyed them both a lot. The latter is semi-autobiographical.
And that’s not all. She was also a playwright. The Mousetrap is the longest running play in UK–it was only the pandemic that halted its run, but it reopened as soon as it was possible. I have seen it performed here in Manchester on their 60th anniversary tour, in 2012. And kept the ticket for nine years!
What’s interesting also is that, although she wrote a few plays and even turned her own books into plays (e.g. there is a stage version of And Then There Were None with a different ending; Witness for the Prosecution was a short story before it was a play), her stories are still adapted for stage by other writers. For example, Love from a Stranger is a play based on the short story Philomel Cottage. You can find Philomel Cottage in the Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories collection (other collections too), or on its own in digital format. It’s a tense story about a newly married woman experiencing sudden anxiety, which she cannot identify. A domestic thriller, in fact.
I went to see Love from a Stranger year in July 2018.
Speaking of adaptations, it would be an unpardonable crime not to mention this guy.
David Suchet played Poirot on screen for 24 years and will probably always be the best, the most ultimate Poirot of all time. Not that other actors shouldn’t play him, or that they won’t be good as good Poirots; I mean that Suchet portrayal is iconic. He is so much associated with the little Belgian detective that he wrote a book about it!
Currently Hercule Poirot is being played by Kenneth Branagh, who also directs the films. Murder on the Orient Express was released in 2017, the next one is Death on the Nile, which was set to be out in October 2020 but keeps being postponed. (Latest date is February 2022.) Branagh’s Poirot is more of a 21st century hero, with a more diverse cast. And that moustache is a legend!
I relate to Poirot in a way that he’s a Continental European living in England, and people keep getting his nationality wrong.
My name is Hercule Poirot and I am probably the greatest detective in the world.
Hercule Poirot, The Mystery of the Blue Train
The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.
Hercule Poirot, Murder on the Orient Express
Human nature is much the same everywhere and, of course, one has opportunities of observing it at close quarters in a village.
Miss Marple, The Thumb Mark of St Peter (short story)
This above quote is the most typical of Miss Marple. She usually cracks the mystery because someone reminds her of someone else. I think in this way, her village serves as a microcosm of the world. She observes life closely, which then helps her solve crimes that baffle even experienced Scotland Yard officers.
Some of my collection:
So, as you can see, I’m an Agatha Christie fan. I know she’s not literally acclaimed–some male author or other apparently wrote some essay titled Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? (and who cares about your essay, male author?)–but so what. There is nothing like curling up with a blanket, nice cup of hot drink and a good old fashioned mystery. Does not mean you can’t appreciate Shakespeare as well. Agatha sometimes quotes Shakespeare–the novel Taken at the Flood is titled after a line in Julius Caesar. And I want to add another thing, the thing I think about often and which appears in her books quite a lot and is my favourite element of her entire work.
Whenever there is a crime committed, the perpetrator must be found. But the most important thing is not to punish the perpetrator. It’s to clear the innocent. I first came across this in the Miss Marple short story The Four Suspects. Miss Marple and her companions discuss an unsolved case presented to them by Sir Henry Clithering, a retired Scotland Yard Commissioner. Miss Marple, as is her fashion, comes to the correct conclusion without much trouble. Sir Henry is outraged by the fact that the guilty party got away with it, but Miss Marple points out that it was not the case–the murderer got in with such a bad lot that their end will be inevitable. But she urges Sir Henry to let the other parties know that they’re innocent. Well, she means particularly one party, the one she believes would suffer most from having that suspicion hanging over their head.
One mustn’t waste thought on the guilty–it’s the innocent who matter.
Miss Marple, The Four Suspects (short story)
This is also the whole premise of Ordeal by Innocence. Dr Calgary approaches a family claiming that he can provide an alibi for the son who got charged with murder. It’s too late for the son, who died in prison, but he thinks he can at least clear his name. But this causes distress to the family–if it wasn’t him, then who was it? And immediately they start suspecting each other again and their nightmare is back. Dr Calgary then decides to find the culprit–which he does in the end.
It’s not the guilty who matter. It’s the innocent. It’s we who matter. Don’t you see what you’ve done to us all?
Hester, Ordeal by Innocence
And that is why Ordeal by Innocence is such a good book and that is why the recent BBC adaptation got it so wrong. All the adaptations by Sarah Phelps (with the exception of 2015’s And Then There Were None, which is impossible to ruin) were bad. That is because the woman had never read any Agatha Christie book when she was tasked with adapting her books. She had previously worked on Eastenders, a degenerate soap opera, and is high up in BBC, but is in no way, shape or form qualified to adapt Agatha Christie books. Thankfully, those adaptations were not very memorable or popular with the audience, and hopefully will be soon forgotten. People still turn to David Suchet’s Poirot, or the older Peter Ustinov movies.
Two tropes that Agatha handles so superbly are: the dysfunctional family (examples: After the Funeral, A Pocketful of Rye, Crooked House, Hercule Poirot’s Christmas) and the love triangle (no examples because that would be telling). Don’t let the latter put you off, this is no YA fiction! It’s possible she reused the trope so often because of her own experience. Her husband, Archie Christie, left her for another woman. That’s when she went missing for 11 days, that incident she never talked about, or mentioned in her autobiography, and that still fascinates people to this day. She was found at a hotel in Harrogate under a fake name, with the surname being the same as her husband’s mistress’s. She may have had a memory loss, or she may have been the original Gone Girl, who knows. She and Archie divorced, and she later met the archaeologist Max Mallowan, who became her second husband, and with whom she was much happier. She accompanied him on his digs and even set one of her books, Murder in Mesopotamia, at an archaeological dig.
Fun fact: when she went missing, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, consulted a psychic to help find the missing writer, using one of her gloves. He was into that stuff.
Some of my favourite Poirot books are: Sad Cypress, Five Little Pigs, The Hollow (mentioned in my Yggdrasil post), Murder of Roger Ackroyd, of course that will always remain my beloved. From Miss Marple collection I rate The Moving Finger and A Murder is Announced the highest. But the one I name as my top Agatha book is Endless Night. It’s a surprisingly good late gem from the author, whose late work is not as good as her earlier one. It’s got an aesthetic of a gothic novel… until it doesn’t. I recommend everyone to read it, if you haven’t already.
I make a point in my post about eBooks that works that enter public domain are available for free on Gutenberg to download in various formats. As of September 2021, Gutenberg has the first six books of Agatha Christie, link here.
I will end with a quote from the epilogue of Agatha’s autobiography.
I have done what I wanted to do. I have been on a journey. Not so much a journey back through the past, as a journey forward–starting again at the beginning of it all–going back to the Me who was to embark on that journey forward through time. I have not been bounded by time or space. I have been able to linger where I wanted, jump backwards and forwards as I wished.
Ooh, she really does float outside the space-time continuum!
Check out my other Agatha Christie posts.
Good people of WordPress, any of you a fan?
They take over.
When life is not coming up roses
L.F. Young
Look to the weeds
and find the beauty hidden within them.
I had roses in my last two posts, but I don’t have any more. All that’s left is weeds.
As for finding beauty, you don’t have to tell me twice. I am that blogger who dedicated a whole category to ugly things.
Maybe I should have said: I, for one, welcome my new weeds overlords.
Today I’m doing something a little bit different from my usual forte, because today, my dear friends, I dedicate a post of my blog to the beautiful and talented British actor Sam Claflin.
Sam is probably best known for playing Finnick in The Hunger Games movies, but other than that, he mostly flies under the radar. Which results in people who take a deeper dive into his filmography emerging with: “OMG, WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS GUY??? He has the range!”
That’s what I’m here for!
Link to Sam’s IMDb page.
I’ve been racking my brains for months, but I cannot for the life of me remember how I first got to know him. It was definitely a case of knowing the name before seeing any of his movies, most likely in connection with The Hunger Games sequels. I remember Catching Fire being on TV once, but not deeming it essential, I didn’t bother watching it, though I vaguely recall just having it on as a background. I think it was the Snow White and the Huntsman movie I saw him in first, and I went to see My Cousin Rachel in the cinemas when it was out. And although I appreciated his outing on Peaky Blinders, it wasn’t until summer last year that I finally discovered all of his talents.
And I’ve come to the conclusion that IMDb ratings don’t mean shit.
So, onto the actual post. I tried to avoid as many spoilers as possible. Although… spoiler for everything, his characters have a habit of not being alive at the end, but I maintain that even if you’re aware of this fact, the films are still worth watching, end of spoiler for everything.
I’ll start with the most obvious one. Catching Fire is the second instalment in The Hunger Games series, the movies adapted from books by Suzanne Collins. Sam plays Finnick Odair, victor of 64th Games from District 4 and a tribute in the Quarter Quell, alongside the main heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence). No other actor could have done a better job portraying Finnick. He captured his arrogance, but also his vulnerability, brilliantly. Finnick appears to be a playboy at the beginning, your typical boyband member/underwear model type (and he’s blond and has an American accent!), until we learn what he had to go through after his victory in the Games, and how deep his love for Annie is.
I have a very difficult and very complicated relationship with The Hunger Games. I found the last book, Mockingjay, especially painful, and the ending made me want to throw my Kindle against the wall, so you understand why I didn’t bother with the movies. Then I got into Sam, and the movies happened to be available on Amazon Prime at the time, so I decided to give Catching Fire a go. Luckily my conflicted feelings have nothing to do with Finnick, who is, together with Johanna Mason, my favourite character. Aside from the fact where he, you know, dies. With that at least I’m not on my own–Finnick is a popular character and majority of the fandom is unhappy about his death. They should have made a change from the books and have him survive, the movies would then have something going for them. When it comes to that, they should have changed a lot about Mockingjay, and dividing a book where you expect revolution to happen, but get “Peeta-Peeta-Peeta waah-waah-waah” instead, is not the best of ideas. I never watched the second Mockingjay and only fast-forwarded through the first one for the Finnick scenes. It’s surprising how little he’s in it. He has two conversations with Katniss, and towards the end he’s recording the video where he talks about his experiences post-victory, but even here the camera keeps switching to Katniss’s dumb, open-mouthed face.
Catching Fire has 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the highest of all THG films, and it’s also the one with most Sam Claflin. NOT a coincidence! The soundtrack is also sick and happens to feature my favourite band, Imagine Dragons. (Spotify link here.)
Now onto some quality! A drama with some comedy and romance mixed in, Their Finest takes place during WW2. The main character is a young screenwriter, played by Gemma Arterton, who joins the production crew of a propaganda movie for the Ministry of Information–yes, this is a movie about a movie! Sam is Tom Buckley, a fellow screenwriter, who hires her to write “slop”, as he calls it, meaning “girl talk”. The film they’re working on is about Dunkirk evacuation (of course it is…).
The cast is phenomenal; there’s Bill Nighy, Richard E Grant, Rachael Stirling, as well as Paul Ritter and the great Helen McCrory, both of whom have sadly passed away this April.
Their Finest is hilarious at times, but poignant too. Buckley has a bit of an ego on him, but he’s likeable. He and Catrin (Gemma’s character) banter a lot, but you can see they begin to truly care about each other. They have great chemistry.
Why do you think that people like films? It’s because stories are structured; have a shape, a purpose, a meaning; and when things gone bad they’re still a part of a plan; there’s a point to them. Unlike life.
Buckley, Their Finest
Churchill is only name-dropped once.
More importantly, we have a lesbian character (the one played by Rachael Stirling), who is alive at the end.
This is also rated 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s the second time Sam has worked with Lone Scherfig.
While Their Finest is set during WW2, Journey’s End is set during WW1. This one is an actual war movie, adapted from the play by RC Sherriff, yet it’s not your typical war movie. Because in this one, it doesn’t matter whether they’re allies or Germans–it’s all about the life in the trenches, and the effects of it on the soldiers. Don’t expect much military action.
Sam plays Captain Stanhope, who leads the company of soldiers when it’s their turn to spend six days at the dugout near St Quentin in northern France. They expect a big German offensive is coming, they just don’t know when, so nobody has any idea which men will be in the trenches at the time they attack. (History note: it’s the Operation Michael on 21 March 1918). A young, naïve, still idealistic officer Jimmy Raleigh (the young talent Asa Butterfield) requests to join Stanhope’s company, as he knows him from back home; they used to play rugby together and his older sister Margaret is engaged to Stanhope. As the General’s nephew, he gets his wish, but he’s not prepared for how much the war has changed Stanhope.
This is truly an outstanding performance by Sam. Mentally shot to pieces and almost an alcoholic, Stanhope is not exactly thrilled to come face to face with an old friend in this state. Especially as the said friend would doubtless report everything to Margaret. When Raleigh arrives, his reaction is a literal “Shit!”
My favourite scene is Lieutenant Osborne (Paul Bettany), tucking Stanhope into bed. Osborne acts like a father-figure to the men, they call him Uncle. Here’s a collage of my screenshots of that scene–it’s very dark, which is the general feel of the movie:
It’s a really moving film that hits right in the feels. Rotten Tomatoes rates it at 91%.
There are no women in this movie, apart from Margaret reading a letter from her brother at the very end, though she has no lines. In this case it really doesn’t matter. Stanhope carried her photograph on him at all times, and didn’t want her to know what’s become of him.
The best Daphne du Maurier adaptation in recent years.
Like I said at the beginning of this post, I saw this on the big screen when it was released, because I like the book. (It was out around the same time as Wonder Woman, which everyone was hyping about, but I went to watch My Cousin Rachel instead. My most favourite book of all time, Rebecca, is, of course, by the same author.) The titular Rachel is played by Rachel Weisz, with Sam in the role of the narrator Philip Ashley. He actually has a double role here, he also plays Ambrose, though that’s only for a couple of scenes at the beginning without any lines. Iain Glen is Nick Kendall, Philip’s godfather and legal guardian, and Holliday Grainger is his daughter and Philip’s childhood friend Louise. Everyone is good in this and everything is good in this. Roger Michell knows his stuff.
In one interview, Sam correctly referred to My Cousin Rachel as gothic thriller, and gothic thriller it is. (Same as Rebecca. NOT a romance.) If you’ve read the book you know that Philip swears revenge on Rachel, whom he blames for the death of Ambrose, his closest person, only to fall head over heels in love with her when he meets her. It’s a very ambiguous story, and we’re not given any answers at the end. The film sticks pretty close to the book, any changes are minimal. There’s only one major difference and that’s at the end, with an added epilogue, which does not really contradict anything from the book. Sam did a great job with Philip, who starts out as completely clueless about women, almost loses his mind, and ends it in some dark places. His misogyny is only a result of his upbringing by Ambrose, a woman hater that wouldn’t even allow female dogs in his house. It’s really Rachel Weisz that steals the show, as she’s supposed to. Daphne du Maurier was a master with her intriguing female characters whose names start with R!
Above screenshots are an example of a change from the book–in the book it was primroses, not bluebells.
Rotten Tomatoes rates My Cousin Rachel at 76%. Compare it to 2020 version of Rebecca on Netflix, which completely missed the point of the story, but got a bigger hype, so more people know about it.
All the trigger warnings apply–this is not a joke!
The Nightingale is set in 1825 in Tasmania. This is the story of Clare, a young Irish convict (Aisling Franciosi), who pursues British officer Hawkins (Sam) through the wilderness, to avenge her family. This is Sam as a villain, and truly a despicable one he is. He likes having the power over those below him. And that’s precisely it, it’s by playing a villain that actors showcase their true talent. Anyone can play a love interest in a romcom, but not anyone can sell a villain. Sam does.
Heads-up, this movie is really violent. Multiple rapes and a murder of a baby happen. You can guess why Clare is on her quest for revenge. She recruits a native tracker Billy, played by Baykali Ganambarr, to help her get Hawkins. Clare, although a survivor of terrible violence, is not exactly without prejudices, she calls Billy “boy”. As the movie progresses, she starts to look at him as a human being. We see more examples of trauma caused by colonialism too. A hard to watch film, but important.
You might know Aisling Franciosi from her total of five minutes on Game of Thrones as Lyanna Stark. Personally I care nothing for Lyanna (Team Elia Martell). It’s not relevant to anything in this post, I’m just saying. Anyway, The Nightingale was an opportunity to flex her acting skills, and flex them she did, and she deserves all the praise for it. So does Baykali.
Rotten Tomatoes rating is 86%.
I love Pirates of the Caribbean films, they’ve got it all: adventure, action, humour, horror, romance–and good romance at that. Sam appears in the fourth instalment of the franchise, his first big movie (prior to that he starred in TV mini series only). He plays Philip Swift, a missionary captured by Blackbeard (Ian McShane). The first time we see him, he’s tied to a mast of Blackbeard’s ship. As mutiny breaks out, Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) and another pirate go to untie him, and Salaman, the other pirate, tells him he’s either with them or against them, upon which Philip responds: “I’m not with you, neither am I against you.”
Salaman to Jack: Can he do that?
Jack Sparrow: He’s religious, I believe it’s required.
Sam’s first scene in his first major movie was with the legendary Jack Sparrow–not a bad start to a film career for a boy from Norwich!
The pirates are on a quest for the Fountain of Youth, which guarantees the drinker eternal youth. But they also need a mermaid’s tear, so they go on a hunt for a mermaid. Mermaids in this universe are malevolent creatures (or it depends how you look at it, if they lure men to their deaths, I say good for them), but nevertheless they manage to capture one, with the help of Philip. He regrets this almost immediately and spends the rest of the movie protecting her, and names her Syrena. She’s played by Astrid Berges-Frisbey.
I’ve never been one for any characters of religion, but between Philip Swift and the Hot Priest from Fleabag, I might just change my mind. Philip is a modest man of God, who believes everyone’s soul can be saved. The way he protects Syrena gives me all the feels. She falls for him too.
This is Sam’s cutest love story.
The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this one is irrelevant. What do they know?
Okay, well, for consistency, it’s 33%. Out of all the POTC movies, it can be objectively said On Stranger Tides is the weakest, but Philip and Syrena’s storyline is the best thing about it. And there’s always fun in swashbuckling action. A great debut for Sam.
A dark retelling of the classic tale of Snow White. You know the story, the evil queen, here named Ravenna (Charlize Theron), wants Snow White (Kristen Stewart) dead and orders the huntsman Eric (Chris Hemsworth) to bring her back Snow White’s heart as a proof. The huntsman saves her instead and, with the help of the seven dwarves, they set off to take Ravenna down. Sam plays William, a childhood friend of Snow White and a duke’s son. For years he believed Snow White was dead, but when he hears she’s still alive, he rides off to save her without a moment of hesitation. He joins the bad guys, pretending to be one of them. And he’s very skilful with a bow and an arrow.
The film is okay, a bit uneven, and it’s not clear who is actually supposed to be Snow White’s love interest, Eric or William. I ship Snow White with William, of course, and we know from the sequel, The Huntsman: Winter’s War that they got together. A son of a duke is a better choice for a queen than a huntsman, in any case.
But they don’t fight for her, the two men actually become friends.
The dwarves are also funny. And the movie is nice to look at. Every time I see it’s on TV, I always leave it on. I like it.
People like to give Kristen Stewart shit, but I don’t.
49% from Rotten Tomatoes.
As for the sequel, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Sam is only there for one single scene, where he talks to Eric. There’s not much to say about that one.
Sam has worked with both Hemsworth brothers–Liam plays Gale in THG.
Survival drama, based on a true story.
Shailene Woodley plays Tami Oldham (now Tami Oldham Ashcraft), a sailor who spent 41 days adrift in the Pacific. Sam is Richard Sharp, her fiancé. Tami arrives to Tahiti as part of her travels, where she meets Richard, a sailing enthusiast and they fall in love. They sail off on Richard’s friends’ boat on a voyage to San Diego, but get caught in hurricane Raymond. Tami finds herself alone, in the middle of the ocean, without a working navigation system.
Tami and Richard’s romance is so… wholesome. During their voyage, he proposes to her and she accepts; it’s a really cute, heart-warming scene. Spoiler, but not really as it’s a real story, Richard Sharp was unfortunately swept overboard and never found. Tami, though, still sails to this day.
A moving, inspiring film.
Rotten Tomatoes rating is 69%.
Oh dear. This one gave me such a hard time, it took me all of six months to figure out how to deal with its very existence.
Look at the picture below. The man on the right is Henry Cavill as Sherlock Holmes. Who is the man on the left?
I’m going to assume, if you haven’t seen Enola Holmes, that your answer was Watson. He looks like Watson, and he should have been Watson. But no, he’s Mycroft. (Who’s supposed to be seven years older than Sherlock. Sam is three years younger than Henry.) Please be aware that this is NOT a canon Mycroft, as we know him from Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. He has nothing in common with the real Mycroft, apart from his job at the government. His deduction skills, which are superior to Sherlock’s, have been completely erased. This Mycroft is a one-dimensional, conservative cartoon villain, complete with a cartoon villain moustache. This change was needed for the sake of an original character, a teenage sister of the Holmeses, the titular Enola. She’s smarter than her brothers, because the narrative wants to her to be so. This butchered version of Mycroft was necessary to provide conflict for the original teenage heroine.
This film is the reason I dedicated a paragraph to Mycroft in my Sherlock Holmes post. It was important to me to put the truth out there. (ETA: 04/06/2022: The post was deleted but I have republished it here.)
Okay. Listen. What they did to Sam’s look here was criminal. From the above image you can’t see it, it’s the pic I took of my TV screen, and I wouldn’t post it here if you could see it, and I’m not posting any screenshots. Look it up. I remember seeing a tweet that went along the lines of: “did they have to press Sam’s hair like that? and did he have to have such a moustache?” Sure, you can dismiss the tweeter as being shallow, but they had a point. Because you cannot make a genuinely handsome guy ugly. (Unless you’re, like, using prosthetics to turn him into an alien or a supernatural monster or something of that kind.) You can let him grow any horrible moustache, style any idiot haircuts you can think of. That perfect bone structure is still there. The dimples are still there. Also, he has beautiful lips. What it results in, is that it makes him just look ridiculous.
Sam has a moustache in two of his best movies, Journey’s End and Their Finest. That is fine. In The Nightingale, where he plays a horrible person, he has sideburns. He didn’t need any villain moustache for that, his evilness was clear from his actions. It’s not the fact that he has a moustache in Enola that I object to. It’s the cartoonish-ness of it.
Henry Cavill fans got the better of it–his Sherlock serves as pure eye candy. He doesn’t do much Sherlocking, he’s there to look pretty with his wild curls. A look that Benedict Cumberbatch mastered ten years before. That’s not a slight against Henry, btw. I liked him in The Witcher. It’s the writing.
This film didn’t need to be part of Sherlock universe at all, anyway. It should have been a story of a young girl’s adventure, hampered by a strict uncle–Mycroft character behaved more like an uncle, these guys don’t even have a sibling dynamic. (Trust me. I have siblings.) I wouldn’t have anything against that. But that would not have generated as much attention as Sherlock pastiche, eh?
Enola Holmes has a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That kid has some strong connections.
A note on that social issues raised in this film: look, I get it. But it’s not that hard to insert some wokery into your fiction. I’ve done it myself. And I’m here for the feminist retelling of literally anything. God is a woman. I’m the biggest supporter of the madwoman in the attic. But Sherlock-verse doesn’t need to be a place for this, because Sherlock Holmes is not a misogynist. It’s the adaptations that give this misconception. Remember that Irene Adler outsmarted him!
This one made me feel unsettled.
Adapted from the play Posh by Laura Wade, it’s the story of two freshmen at Oxford University, who join this infamous club. An all-male elite dining club, members must be from private schools and rich. It’s based on real life Bullingdon Club, past members of which include former Prime Minister David Cameron, former Chancellor George Osborne and our current Prime Minister Boris Johnson (sigh). The way the club operates is: they book a table at a restaurant, trash the place, and then give a cheque to the owner to cover the damages.
No wonder we’re in such mess.
Sam and Max Irons play the new members. Sam’s character is called Alistair Ryle, and he’s a spoiled brat who hates poor people. Max’s character Miles is down to earth, and ends up disgusted with the practices of the club. He comes out of it much better.
I like a good villain, but not this type. It’s Draco Malfoy of the first five Harry Potter books, more or less. (I started liking Draco in the sixth book, after he used the body-freezing spell on Harry on the Hogwarts Express, and covered him with the invisibility cloak. I thought, yeah, finally you’re actually doing something, instead of running to hide under your parents’ skirts, and informing on your schoolmates to Dolores Umbridge. You get what I mean.) The reason the movie left me unsettled is because it can’t decide what it is. At the beginning, it seems like a comedy–we see how the club was established in the 18th century and a lord catching his wife getting jiggy with another man. Then we’re in the present, and the feel is like a contemporary drama. Alistair initially starts out as a sympathetic character, he even gets robbed while getting money out of a cash machine. (Also, I think he may have been autistic.) But then we find out he’s very much not. But, as ever, great acting from Sam.
I will say something in favour of the movie, though. Despite it focusing on an all male club, there are female characters, and they’re quite well developed, considering the limited time they get on screen. There’s Max’s girlfriend Lauren (Holliday Grainger), who takes no shit from him, or any of the posh boys. There’s the daughter of the pub landlord, in whose establishment the second half of the movie takes place. Even Natalie Dormer in a cameo as a sex worker. She flatly refuses their demands of being done by all of them under the table, and leaves. The director is a woman.
Lone Scherfig also directed the above mentioned Their Finest. She’s Danish, in case you wanted to know.
It’s got 67% on Rotten Tomatoes.
I thought I’d give this one a quick mention.
In February 1958, on its third attempt at take-off, British European Airways Flight 609 crashed in Munich. It was carrying the Manchester United football team. Eight players lost their lives. The film is about this sad event, and how the team overcame the tragedy. Sam has the role of Duncan Edwards, one of the footballers who died (typical). He didn’t die at the place of the crash, but later in the hospital.
So, obviously, this is of interest mostly to football fans, but there wasn’t much of the sport itself. We do get to see Sam kicking the ball a bit. Sam likes football in real life, he did Soccer Aid in 2019.
After one victorious game, the teams goes to a bar to celebrate, and Duncan advises newly signed Bobby Charlton (Jack O’Connell) to tell girls that he’s a plumber or an electrician, instead of a footballer. Because they only earn £15/week and their career is over by 30. How times have changed!
There is no rating on Rotten Tomatoes for this film. Probably because it’s not very well known.
I live in Manchester, but I have no interest in football. Still, it was a nice movie.
The latest of Sam’s movies, as of June 2021. You can tell from the title that it’s a psychological thriller. It’s not really much, very predictable, not helped by the fact that the trailer gave most of it away. I also easily guessed the final twist.
In the main role is Casey Affleck as a psychiatrist, whose client commits suicide. James, the brother of the dead girl, played by Sam, befriends his family–and thus trouble starts. He seduces the psychiatrist’s daughter, and also sleeps with his wife. James is the type of baddie I like seeing Sam play. He’s also the one who does most of the acting in this movie. Casey Affleck looks bored throughout, and the wife, Michelle Monaghan, is not given enough to do. As a psycho thriller, it’s very unoriginal, in parts even nonsensical in this age of internet and Google. Yet, for Sam’s sake, it’s worth seeing.
I made a better film out of it in my head–and that was before I even watched it!
The Rotten Tomatoes rating keeps changing still, but it’s around 20%.
What a missed opportunity.
One romcom, for the sake of variety. Could have been better if it lost the male anatomy jokes.
Seriously, it’s 2021, can we be done with the dirty jokes now, please?
Love Wedding Repeat takes place at a wedding. But it isn’t until halfway through that we find out there are multiple versions of the day. Don’t get fooled, though, it’s no Groundhog Day. Eleanor Tomlinson plays the bride, Sam is her brother. Aside from making sure the wedding goes smoothly, he also has to deal with an ex-girlfriend, who is one of the guests, the bride’s former boyfriend, who is not over her, and a misplaced sedative, while also trying to get the girl. He gets a lot to do, and what I liked was how he tried to be helpful to everyone. That doesn’t leave him much time for his own love life, which results in his love interest, played by Olivia Munn, sort of just standing around. She could have had an interesting story of her own, she’s a high flying journalist. At least she gets to wear a pretty dress.
Eh, whatever. There’s worse romcoms.
35% from Rotten Tomatoes.
Two Claflins for the price of one!
Sam’s younger brother Joe Claflin is an actor too; he appeared on Game of Thrones, the Watchers on the Wall episode (S4 E9). Here he plays Sean, brother of Sam’s character Liam. Brothers play brothers in this crime thriller.
Liam is released from prison, determined to get his life back on track, and to reunite with his girlfriend and son. He gets tangled up in conspiracy and corruption. The caption at the beginning says “based on true events”. It’s to do with London’s Olympics bid, but I’m not sure what’s going on. The film has a decent idea, but the execution is a bit… unimpressive. I liked Sam’s character–showing his range again–and I liked the relationship with his girlfriend (Naomi Ackie). Although at first she is cautious–understandably so, as he’s just out of jail–they do reunite, and live as a family at the end. (Spoiler, but who cares.) Plus, we get Sam in a boxing ring!
Naomi Ackie appeared on Star Wars: The Rise of the Skywalker as Jannah. When I was watching TROS, it occurred to me that she could be a lost sister of Finn, John Boyega’s character. It seems this theory is shared by some of the fans. I’m not invested in the Star Wars fandom enough to check all the details are correct, so as far as I go, that is my headcanon.
Rotten Tomatoes gives it 30%.
Oh yes!
Sam does more films than TV, but he did appear on one of the most popular and critically acclaimed shows of the last decade, Peaky Blinders. He stars in Season 5 as a villain, and a juicy one–Oswald Mosley, a real life politician and member of Parliament, who became the leader of British fascists. Nasty stuff.
Mosley butts heads with Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy), who was elected MP at the end of Season 4.
This is another fantastic performance by Sam, one of his best. Mosley rhetoric was abhorrent, but it was appealing to some sections of the population. We see this happening in our times too. We do indeed.
Manchester is one of the filming locations for Peaky Blinders, I posted pictures of the sets I went to see in February.
Sam will be back as Mosley in Season 6, which will be the last of the series. They’ve now wrapped up the filming and it should be on next year. I sure am looking forward!
Of course, this is not the complete Sam Claflin’s filmography. These are just the films I thought were worth talking about.
So, what to conclude then, other than that I look forward to see Sam in his future projects. The next one is Daisy Jones & The Six, an adaptation of the book of the same name by Taylor Jenkins Reid, about the rise and fall of a band. Hopefully they should soon start filming, the pandemic has delayed it twice already.
Well, I hope those of you who have lasted till the end enjoyed this post and I hope you give some of Sam’s movies a watch.
And best of luck to Sam Claflin!
About the photos in this post: the captions should be self-explanatory. Screenshots are from trailers on YouTube. Journey’s End screeenshots are from my Amazon account.
Buttercups never got the attention the deserve on this blog. So here they are now.
Pools of them, actually.
Pictures are from Heaton Park.
Buttercups are made out of old sunshine, said Paul Irving to his teacher Anne Shirley in Anne of Avonlea. I think he was right.
I’ve been tidying my blog lately; by which I mean sorting out my tags, mostly, and even deleting some older posts. One of the deleted posts was titled “Animal” and I wrote it in response to the WordPress Discover Challenge. (Remember that one? Yeah. They killed that one before they killed the Weekly Photo Challenge. What was good about the Discover Challenge was that you could respond in any way you wanted, using text, photo, video, music, anything. I made four posts for this challenge before it quietly disappeared, all of which I have now deleted.) It was a good post, though, so I decided to repost what I wrote, with better pictures. If you’ve visited my blog before, and even from the title of this entry, you can guess that the animal in question was a cat.
My cat is called Pepper and, as you can see, she is black. Black cats are not popular, they struggle most with being rehomed from shelters, whether it’s due to prejudice or the fact that people think they won’t look good on Instagram–both stupid reasons. And that’s why I like them. Someone has to stick up for the unloved, forgotten creatures.
I’ve learned a lot from Pepper. Without her I wouldn’t have known how magnificent cats are. And most of all, I would never have discovered that I was a cat person. I would have lived my life without this knowledge. She made me know myself better.
That’s her resting her head on the book I was reading. It’s The Hollow* by Agatha Christie (actually it’s a volume of four novels, also including Three Act Tragedy, Sad Cypress, and Evil Under The Sun), featured in my post about Yggdrasil tree.
People joke about cats wanting to take over the world, but I disagree. They already rule the world. They do what they want and we love them and feed them. Why would they bother? Also, they’re quite lazy. Ruling the world would be just too much work.
Here’s some good quotes about cats:
I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time.
Neil Gaiman
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
Robert A Heinlein
If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.
Mark Twain
Cats are far wiser than we; their language is silence.
Ki Longfellow
What greater gift than the love of a cat.
Charles Dickens
Dickens got it right. There’s nothing better than a love of a cat.
And finally, let me throw in some Star Trek.
And creative beings too, I’d argue.
*I feel I have to mention this, The Hollow contains some bad antisemitism, so just content warning about that. The book wasn’t fresh in my mind when I did the Yggdrasil post, and only on the recent re-read I noticed how bad it really was. Although *** spoilers, I guess *** the Jewish character is not the victim or the culprit. It’s just a minor character, Midge’s boss, but she’s badly stereotyped.
From my local park, where they grow in abundance every year.
When all at once I saw a crowd,
William Wordsworth
A host, of golden daffodils
Statue of Mahatma Gandhi was unveiled in Manchester in November 2019. Here’s what it looks like:
The building behind his stick is Manchester Cathedral.
At the time of its unveiling, there were some talks about Gandhi being a controversial figure nowadays.
I don’t really know, I’m just here to post pictures.
Be the change you wish to see.
Gandhi
I’ve always liked this quote.
But, Some Photoblog, you’re at least two years too late with this post!
Eh. *shrugs* By now at least (hopefully) everyone has calmed down.
I first started watching Game of Thrones in 2014, when it was in its fourth season. I was hooked right from the start. It was–and still is, really–the rich world and the variety of such great characters, especially the female characters.
After finishing the first four seasons, I read the books (the book version is called A Song of Ice and Fire), I also read some other stories from this universe, like the Dunk and Egg novellas (pictured below in a collection A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms) and a couple of short stories about the Targaryen civil war.
Spoilers for the whole series ahead, obviously, and, maybe less obviously, though not if you know me, there will be some unpopular opinions.
The greatest one of which is, I liked how it ended. I called it!
It was sometime in 2018, I was chatting to a colleague about this series, when I suddenly had a brainwave. “You know what, I don’t think it’s gonna be Jon Snow and Daenerys at the end. I think it’s gonna be Tyrion and Sansa.” If you’ve seen the whole thing, you know I got that right.
Both of them ended up in positions of power–Tyrion as Hand of the King, the job he was always the best at, and Sansa as the Queen in the North, which she should have been in the first place back in Season 6.
I never said nobody else would get to be in power, I just knew it would be Sansa and Tyrion and not Jon and Daenerys–and I was never one of the Daenerys Will Go Mad crowd. Though they turned out to be right, so I hope at least they’re happy.
I also always knew that Jon Snow was the happiest in the far north, at the Wall and beyond, with his direwolf Ghost and the wildlings. This came true as well. His parentage is irrelevant, it doesn’t define him and besides, he was always more Stark than Targaryen; his mother Lyanna was said to be a bit wild, like Arya. He has no interest in being a king. If someone doesn’t want to rule, they shouldn’t be forced to. Imagine you tell me you hate swimming and I push you into a pool. You wouldn’t like it, would you?
That’s what I do. I drink and I know things.
Tyrion Lannister
I like nearly all the characters (some of them more than others, some I’m not that interested in but then later I might get interested, I’m like that), but my most favourite is Cersei Lannister. She embodies that pure female rage.
The level of hate Cersei receives borders on fanatical–and yet it’s non-sensical. She’s not worse than any other character; Game of Thrones is nothing if not moral greyness. The only thing she’s guilty of, same as about half of us, is being a woman. If she was a man she’d be one of the Top 5 favourites. She’s basically the Taylor Swift song The Man. (When everyone believes you, what’s that like? People didn’t believe Cersei when she said she was pregnant, though we were shown the scene where she and Jaime conceived the child. But when any other couple bangs, it’s an immediate assumption that it’ll result in pregnancy.) For the haters, it wasn’t just enough that she died, she needed to die violently. This despite that fact that the city was being torched by dragonfire and Cersei wasn’t the one who was torching it. They wanted Jaime to kill her, when the truth was that he literally came back for her to save the both of them (plus their unborn child), which was the subject of his last conversation with brother Tyrion, who told him of the passage out of the castle. And this is happening while the buildings are falling down and it would be far more likely that Cersei would die in the rubble anyway! I really wonder if the Cersei haters are even capable of logical thinking. (They aren’t.)
The Lannister twins dying together was quite a popular theory, it was foreshadowed enough, so I don’t know what everyone expected. I’d have preferred if they did save themselves and made it to Pentos, but hey, it’s Game of Thrones.
Thinking about what I’d change about the series, it’s really only two things: one, everything about the Dorne plot. Dorne was not done justice on the show. Originally, I’m a House Martell fan, but I switched to Lannisters, because there was nothing going on with the Martells (and who knows where the Dorne plot will go in the books, if there will be any more books, that is). At least Pedro Pascal as Oberyn was cool. Alexander Siddig, on the other hand, was criminally wasted as Doran Martell. I had been so looking forward to him in that role and it was a disappointment. (Last year, I had a similar experience with another actor, as it happens). Arianne Martell is my most favourite books-only character. I’m thinking that if they had put her into the show, she would have just died, so it’s probably better she wasn’t there. She’s the heir to Sunspear, the seat of House Martell, because in Dorne it is the oldest child that inherits, regardless of gender. The show never addressed this, one of its downsides.
The second thing I would change is, I’d keep the Jaime and Brienne relationship strictly platonic. That… umm… scene still makes me gag to this day, so much so that I can’t even stand seeing the two actors in the same shot. Interesting that Jaime and Cersei are an incestuous couple, but their scenes never felt gross to me, like the Jaime and Brienne one did. It’s not like either of them could be with anyone else, not for a long time anyway. I wonder if George RR Martin got inspired by that Wuthering Heights quote “He’s more myself than I am, whatever the souls are made of, his and mine are the same”. It’s very fitting for Cersei and Jaime. (Originally meant for foster siblings, may I stress.)
By what right does the wolf judge the lion?
Jaime Lannister
As for Jaime, he essentially fulfilled his promise to Catelyn of returning her daughters–or one daughter as it was believed Arya was dead at that time. He just didn’t do it himself, but delegated the task to Brienne instead, giving her the sword Oathkeeper (made from former Ned Stark’s sword Ice) and Podrick Payne for company. Brienne carried out the task, she saved Sansa from the Boltons and safely accompanied her to the Wall, where she was reunited with Jon Snow. This not only proves that he did what Catelyn asked him to, but that Catelyn wasn’t stupid when she trusted him to do that. She was proved right. Another reminder: Jaime knighted Brienne, making her the first female knight. This enables her to knight more people, which means she can make more women knights.
But, you know, “character assassination” because he didn’t kill the woman that carried his child. You can click this link to see a breakdown of Jaime’s quotes, directly from the script, proving that he always chose Cersei.
[Note: Jaime actor Nikolaj Coster Waldau has stated multiple times that he liked the ending of his character. The haters are coming up with absurd theories that he’s being forced by The Powers That Be to say that, instead of simply accepting that he might have a different view from them. Like I said, with these people, logical thinking is absent.]
Next character I want to give shout out to is Arya Stark. I’m not a House Stark fan. I do like the two Stark girls, in later seasons I preferred Sansa more. I got a leeetle bit annoyed at the way Arya’s storyline in Braavos got handled–it seemed to me that she only used the Faceless Men for her own interests. The Faceless Men served more like a plot device for Arya, but make no mistake, they’re bigger than her and bigger than House Stark. The Free City of Braavos is my favourite location in this universe, I love everything about it, but then again that’s just me and the vast majority of the audience won’t care, they just want to see Arya get her revenge. But I want to talk about something else, something that matters to me very much.
Back in Season 1 there is a conversation Arya has with her father. When she asks if she can be a lord of the holdfast one day (something Ned suggests Bran can be now that he can’t be a knight of the Kingsguard due to his disability), he laughs and says that she will marry a high lord, and rule his castle, and her sons will be knights and lords. She shakes her head and says: “No. That’s not me.”
[Note: Ned’s a conservative]
And at the end, it’s still not her. She rejects Gendry’s proposal of marriage and sails away towards adventures. You don’t know how much it meant to me to see her do that. If there is a female character in fiction who says she doesn’t want to have children (marriage optional), you can pretty much guarantee that by the time the story ends, she will have them. This is disappointing and extremely infuriating. (I’m looking at you, Katniss Everdeen.) I’d rather have the character want children, or not mention anything at all. It certainly doesn’t help when you’re like that in real life and people just go “oh, you’ll change your mind.” But Arya knew herself and she stuck to her guns. I mean, this is a young woman that learned to be a water dancer, avenged her family and killed the Night King. And you want her to become the lady of Storm’s End and promptly get knocked up? No, sir.
Representation Matters.
Another one I’ve got here is Sandor Clegane, aka The Hound, a lover of good chicken and a reluctant adoptive father figure to Arya. Occasionally I like to channel him.
I live in a monarchy.
Last but not least, I want to give a shout out to Samwell Tarly.
I have no Sam goodies unfortunately, so I had to resort to taking a pic of my laptop screen while it played the YouTube video of the scene in question. The scene is from the finale. The noble lords and ladies are having a council meeting where they’re trying to come to some decision regarding the next ruler of Westeros. Sam is present at this meeting. He stands up and proposes that everyone should have a vote, all the citizens of Westeros, including the smallfolk. The reaction to this is laughter and scorn from all those present at the meeting, with unoriginal, lame jokes supplied by Lord Royce and Edmure Tully about horses and dogs having the right to vote too. Nobody sticks up for Sam. Not. A. Single. Soul. So he sits down and shuts up. It’s upsetting and potentially triggering seeing Sam treated like that, a character who has been abused by his father, struggled with self esteem issues, and still found it in his heart to help a poor wildling girl, herself also a survivor of abuse.
It is especially a let-down seeing not even Sansa speak up for him, she who has been through so much, and who has just told off her uncle Edmure. Arya wouldn’t, she’d cut your throat for having a bad opinion on Jon Snow, so clearly she can’t handle democracy (not that she’s interested in politics, it’s puzzling that she’s at that meeting at all), but Sansa could have at least refrained from laughing–though there is a shot where the camera focuses on her face and she looks like she’s having thoughts. Let’s hope so!
I like to think that Sam continued his fight for universal suffrage and I like to think that Tyrion listened to him (in Season 7 Tyrion praises the way the Ironborn and Night’s Watch choose their leaders). Keep fighting the good fight, Sam.
In 2018 I went to a small independent Game of Thrones convention here in Manchester. I brought back three autographed photographs; Ian McElhinney (Barristan Selmy), Roger Ashton-Griffiths (Mace Tyrell) and Toby Sebastian (Trystane Martell). I can confirm they were all very nice.
I don’t know how else to wrap this up other than saying, thank you for reading.
Valar morghulis.
I bought this loaf and when I put it on the wooden chopping board, it looked so nice I had to take a picture. But my white kitchen top made too harsh a background, so I later bought another loaf of bloomer and did it again using a kitchen towel for a background.
Bread is one of the oldest man-made foods and is culturally and religiously significant. It’s also often used as a metaphor for sustenance. The Lord’s Prayer, for example, features the line “give us today our daily bread”. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre says to (that bastard) Rochester: “Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup?” Bread-winner is used to describe the member of the household who earns the largest chunk of the income.
Some Photoblog 